


A Year Has Passed

by CantStopImagining



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/F, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 04:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6180556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantStopImagining/pseuds/CantStopImagining
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series five round-up. Spoilers for 5.08.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Year Has Passed

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this before the episode aired to calm myself down, and obviously finished it afterwards. I guess it's a bit of a round up of all the things that have happened this series. It was kind of therapeutic to write hahaha.

Delia moves to Nonnatus in the spring. Sister Julienne’s garden is beginning to bloom, and the night’s are just warm enough for them to leave their overcoats behind when they go for their late night walks. She arrives with a crate of books, and two small suitcase of clothes. Patsy catalogues it all with keen eyes; her belongings, the way she settles her library neatly along the shelves before she’s even packed away a single dress, the smile that stretches across her lips, into the bumps of dimples in her cheeks, brightening her eyes. She doesn’t trace her fingers over the faint bruises on her knuckles, or the soft skin of her nose, or the spatter of freckles she’s only recently discovered between her shoulder blades (six months ago; it feels like yesterday and an age all in one). She wants to. It isn’t safe, though. She instead settles on helping her arrange the vase of flowers on her window ledge, drinking in the sound of her laughter in the familiarity of her home. Their home, now. 

All at once, Delia becomes a part of them. She drifts down corridors, laughing with Trixie and Barbara, joining conversation at meal times, helping Sister Winifred with the cooking. It doesn’t happen gradually at all, and it takes Patsy by surprise, how naturally Delia falls into her everyday routine like she’s been there all along. Like a missing piece of a puzzle. 

The Summer is short and warm. It becomes about trips to the pictures, and ice creams, and late night walks along the docks. Delia’s laughter vibrates through the stone walls of Nonnatus, joined in tandem by Patsy’s. She had promised herself she wouldn’t do this. Back when she thought she was capable of having only a slither of Delia without needing all of her. She forces herself to spend time outside of her, to help with the cubs and fill extra hours in the clinic, and put just a little more of herself aside. She feels joy swell in her when she sees Delia sitting with her friends - their friends -giggling over a card game with Barbara, gossiping with a mug of horlicks and Trixie for company. But she always finds herself falling back beside her. They sit together watching television in the evenings and she doesn’t move away when Delia’s hand creeps closer to hers, when their fingers brush for a second, but she does feel her heart thumping in her chest, does feel her cheeks go pink.

Delia waits up for her at night. She doesn’t think about nuns walking in on them when she backs Patsy up against the sink in the kitchen and cups her face in her hands, allowing their lips to touch for only a moment before she drifts away again, swaying her hips and tossing a smirk over her shoulder. Every inch of Patsy’s flesh tingles. She can’t wipe the smile from her lips.

By September, Patsy has forgotten to worry. She no longer breathes a sigh of relief each night when Delia comes back to her, unharmed and whole, and talking animatedly about everything and nothing all at once. She does spend all day thinking of her, and counting down until she will return to her, but she doesn’t wake up in the night in a blind panic that she might be gone. She doesn’t need the reassurance of finding her asleep in the dark and sobbing against her sleeping body, until Delia wakes and wraps her in her arms and tells her everything’s alright.

They walk home from the pictures, arms linked, making plans for a future they still can’t quite believe they might actually get to live. They make lists of places they want to visit before they’re old, with the ease of people who actually believe they might one day make it there.

They’re not as careful as they should be. Patsy pads from the room she shares with Trixie to the room down the hall and forgets to look both ways. She no longer tenses at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, or the turning of door knobs. She knows she ought to. She knows being careless could lead to it all ending. The yearning she feels, though, knowing Delia is so close, but so far away, outweighs the sensible part of her who knows to stay away. She spends nights pressed against Delia, her lips finding new expanses of skin to conquer, her fingers running freely through loose, dark hair. She doesn’t think of Trixie lying alone in their room, able to wake any moment and notice her absence. Her whole mind is full of Delia and nothing but Delia and she can’t - for the first time in her life - allow logic to weigh into her decisions, not whilst Delia is right there and close enough to touch.

Besides, she knows what happened last time she let go. She can’t bear to think of it happening again.

November creeps in. She wears a new dress to dinner with Delia’s mother. She worries endlessly about it, about what she’s going to say, what she’s going to wear, how she’s going to face the woman who has the ability to change everything. She clutches at Delia’s hand in the safety of the back of a taxi cab, and she says a silent prayer that this might work out how they want it to. It feels too good to be true. That a year after her life fell apart, she should be so lucky, that she should be able to hold her love’s hand so freely and not feel as though she might be ripped away from her any moment.

With a new confidence, she locks eyes and the words spill from her mouth before she can stop them. Delia’s shifts awkwardly beside her, but she does not break. They walk out with their heads held high and with Delia’s birth certificate tucked safely away in her handbag, and it feels like they’ve conquered something huge, even if they haven’t.

She feels guilty for the relief that washes over her, for the smile that she can’t tug from her lips for the days that follow. The house mourns for Sister Evangelina, and she’s by their side, teary-eyed and feeling just as much like a chapter has ended, but now also like something new has begun. She holds Delia’s hand tight in hers as she’s reminded _none of us know how long the things we love will last_ , but for once she isn’t filled with fear, but instead with hope.


End file.
